Philippine Troops Nab Abu Sayyaf Member

Published
7:00 pm EST, Thursday, January 16, 2003

A senior member of the militant group Abu Sayyaf has been arrested on kidnapping charges in the southern Philippines, military officials said Friday.

Adjid Moro, who also goes by the names of Abu Pakistan and Wahid Malli, did not resist arrest Wednesday when soldiers swooped down on a house in the city of Zamboanga following weeks of surveillance, officials said.

Moro was a procurement officer and founding member of Abu Sayyaf, a separatist group with alleged links to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida terrorist network. He was also being investigated in connection with a series of attacks in the southern Philippines, authorities said.

The United States has included the Abu Sayyaf on its list of foreign terrorist organizations.

The group seized three Americans and 17 Filipinos from a resort in May 2001 at the start of a yearlong kidnapping spree. One of the Americans, Guillermo Sobero of Corona, Calif., was killed by the rebels and another, Martin Burnham of Wichita, Kan., died during a rescue operation. Burnham's wife was wounded but recovered by soldiers.

The group is holding four Jehovah's Witness members and three Indonesia tugboat crewmembers it kidnapped last year. It has also been blamed for a series of bombings in Zamboanga late last year that killed 12 people, including a Green Beret, and injured more than 200 other people.